Content-based Packet Marking for Application-Aware Processing in Overlay Networks

In many emerging sensing applications, random network losses may lead to drop of critical information, rendering partially received data useless for the end users. A packet-marking scheme based on the application content is proposed that enables application-aware processing of the data within the overlay network. A token-bucket based rate control algorithm in conjunction with the proposed packet-marking scheme enables on-the-fly selection of data for forwarding/drop to a particular end user at the desired transmission rate. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the packet-marking and token-bucket based rate control scheme in simultaneously meeting heterogeneous QoS requirements of the multiple end users for content quality and bandwidth for a weather monitoring sensing application